MY MOTHER, THE WAR HERO
After the war, when Sabine reflected on her time during the war, she said: ‘I did nothing special. I just helped where I could.’ However, the price she paid for her contribution was heavy. Two years of concentration camps and untold misery led to long-lasting effects on her physical and mental health.
In 1939, when storm clouds gathered over Europe and war seemed a certainty, Sabine was leading a happy and carefree life, looking forward to getting married and having children. But, as she soon learned, the future can change in an instant. On 10 May, 1940, Holland was invaded and capitulated quickly. Soon many friends started to disappear into hiding or fleeing abroad. Those left behind started forming Resistance groups and Sabine joined a small cell of friends doing their bit.
Her task within the Resistance group was to pass on messages and find safe houses, including using her own, for British pilots shot down over Holland or for Resistance fighters who were sought by the Germans.
Unfortunately, betrayal soon followed and in April 1943 she was arrested and first taken to the headquarters of the Sicherheitsdienst in The Hague and from there was transported to an Amsterdam jail, were she spent
several months being interrogated about her knowledge of the Resistance. Life there was harsh, but, thanks to smuggled letters in her laundry, written on cigarette papers, she managed to keep in contact with her mother.
In September 1943 she was transferred to a Utrecht jail for sentencing. She was charged with helping the enemy and spying, and sentenced to forced labour until death or the end of the war.
She also fell into the feared Nacht und Nebel category, which meant she would disappear without a trace and no one would know if she was dead or alive.
Shortly after her sentencing she was yet again transferred, this time to Amersfoort, a male concentration camp. Her arrival there caused great upheaval. She was the only woman among thousands of men and the Kommandant, not knowing what to do with her, put her in the punishment bunker. The male prisoners collected cigarettes for her and even some of the guards took pity on her. As a result they were sent to a concentration camp
‘THE CROWDS, THE STENCH, SCREAMING GUARDS SHOCKED HER’
elsewhere themselves. Throughout this time, what seems so remarkable is her optimism and determination that all this would soon pass and she would be home in time for Christmas. But a few weeks later, towards the end of October, yet another transport awaited her.
This time her destination was Ravensbruck, the largest female concentration camp in Germany.
The shock on arrival for the new prisoners here was enormous: the crowds, the stench, the screaming guards with their ferocious growling dogs, the endless rules and regulations, which if not immediately understood, resulted in severe punishments.
Sabine was lucky in several respects: she was young and
strong and she spoke fluent German. Her first job as a slave labourer was in the weaving factory, but as soon as she started working there she fell ill and was sent to the typhoid ward in the hospital where she soon started suffering from bronchitis, angina, sinusitis and toothache as well. Her prospects were poor.
Everyone thought she was going to die, but she was determined to live. Once out of hospital, she was sent to work in the Siemens factory. This was objectionable work as she had to make components for the V2 rockets that would be bombing the home country.
But working inside and sitting down, even if it was freezing cold, was better than doing hard labour outside. This job lasted six months and she was next sent to work in the depot where the trains from the front arrived full of dirty uniforms, which had to be washed and repaired.
But as the war progressed and the Germans were forced to retreat from the eastern front, the trains started carrying looted paintings, silver and antiques etc. These all had to be catalogued before being sent on to Berlin.
Sabine, with her secretarial skills, had to note down all the goods and then type the endless inventory lists. The working day by now was up to 22 hours a day.
Meanwhile, the Russians were approaching and endless streams of prisoners from other camps were arriving in the already full-tobursting camp. Her bed, which she had shared until then with one other, she now had to share with four, sometimes five strangers. The conditions were horrendous.
There were women and children sleeping outside or in makeshift tents, no sanitation, hardly any food or water and illness and death everywhere, not to mention the icy winter conditions.
The Germans were panicking. They did not want to leave any evidence of the state of the camp for the Russians or Allies to find, so mass executions took place daily. However, they could not kill people fast enough and the panic to empty the camp was great.
By the end of February 1945, thousands were sent on death marches and 2,000 women and children, including Sabine, were sent to Mauthausen Concentration camp in cattle and coal wagons. The journey took several days and many women and children did not survive the journey.
Having arrived at the station in Mauthausen in the middle of the night, there was a long walk through the snow to the camp which was situated on top of a mountain, where they had to stand for hours, until daybreak and registration. Mauthausen was a male extermination camp and this large group of women caused great consternation and excitement. After the initial quarantine, the women were sent to clear the bombed railway junction near Linz.
That day there was another bombardment and 80 women were killed. Sabine was badly injured. The end of the war was very near and the Germans, fearful of the repercussions of the Allies, tried to improve conditions within the camp. Several small hospitals were built and Sabine was lucky to be taken to one of these. While waiting to be treated, a German guard called Gebele offered her some food and drink and started chatting to her. He told her he was a prisoner himself, but now worked as an orderly in the hospital. He arranged to have her broken ankle set and provided her with some medication.
A few days later she received her first letter from him, asking her if they could write to each other. In his second letter he professed his love for her and with each subsequent
letter he fell deeper in love with her. He sent her medicines, food and clothes. He also protected her from being sent to the gas chamber or the camp brothel and from the dangerous intentions of other male prisoners.
He was head over heels in love and soon suggested they should get married, but Sabine was not at all interested. All she could think about was how to stay alive until liberation day, which was so near and yet so far. She was in a very difficult position, trying to keep him interested, while at the same time holding him off. She trod a fine line between dealing with his intrusive attentions, but not rejecting him and thereby upsetting him.
He was keeping her alive. And not only her, but also her best friend with whom she had shared a bed for nearly two years, and her old doctor from Holland, who Gebele had rescued at her request.
Gebele wrote 20 letters to Sabine in the space of a few weeks. Some very long, some shorter notes, but always full of concern for her, while at the same time slightly threatening, certainly in the light of his superior position compared to her prisoner status in the camp. His letters are not only full of love declarations, but also give a good insight on how the war was progressing. Once he got to know Sabine, he started referring to the Allies as friends.
He confessed that he had been a prisoner for 11 years, due to shooting his wife, and that he had always tried to help his fellow human beings. But it was quite clear that the stress of the war, the conditions of camp life and this sudden allconsuming passion for someone he just met were taking their toll.
The nearer the end of the war came, the more he seemed to lose touch with reality.
He was determined to get Sabine out of the camp on the first available evacuation transport, which kept being postponed due to the front moving daily, which made all roads impassable. But eventually, on the night of 22 April he managed to get Sabine and her friends on the first available Red Cross Bus out of Mauthausen and to freedom in Switzerland, where she recuperated for a few months before finally returning to Holland and her mother.
Gebele himself returned to Germany after the war where he died during an operation in September 1945.
My opinion of him is mixed. He was in a position of power and bullied Sabine by making references (albeit jokingly) to punishing her but I have to be thankful to him too because, after all, he did save her life. Without him she would not have survived those last few weeks.
I found all of these letters, documents and photos in the attic after my mother died. They were a complete revelation to me. My mother, like most camp survivors, hardly ever spoke of her ordeal other than mentioning the cold, the hunger and the fear. Her whole archive is now in the Resistance Museum in Amsterdam and available to view on its website.
‘SHE HARDLY EVER SPOKE OF HER ORDEAL OTHER THAN MENTIONING THE COLD, THE HUNGER AND THE FEAR’
Sabine’s War by Eva Taylor is published by HarperNorth and available now
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